Just kidding, !
Two Kinds of Decisions
I’ve been on a Daniel Kahneman kick lately. You may know him from the bestseller Thinking, Fast & Slow. I came across an article about overconfidence and gut decisions, and it got me thinking about how decision making works for Amazon sellers.
Now… some of my Amazon decisions get graded fast. Some of them never really get graded at all. And of course by grading I mean, did they work… or not?
1. The fast ones (Graded in days or a week):
- A bid change
- A price
- A main image
- A title
If I change a bid on Tuesday, by Friday I know if it worked. The answer comes back in days and it's clear. Yes or no. I've made that call thousands of times. Every one of them taught me something, which is why my instinct there is real.
2. The slow ones. Graded in months, if ever.
- Which product to launch
- How big a PO to place
- Which supplier to bet on
- When to kill a product
I choose it, I order it, it ships, it launches, and six months later I find out how it went. Even then I can't say exactly why. Was it the product? The timing? A competitor who landed the same week? Reviews that came in slow?
(And I can list every product I've ever launched from memory…which is the whole problem)
Nobody gets good at anything this way. If I took 30 blindfolded jump shots over 10 years and got the score mailed to me the following spring, I wouldn't call myself a shooter.
It doesn't feel like that from the inside, though. Ten years of picking products feels exactly like 10 years of getting better at picking products. My confidence arrived because time passed. But does that mean I know what I’m doing?
My PPC already proves it. It runs on rule-based automations somebody smarter than me built, and they beat my own management. My product picks still run on my gut, and I don't know if my gut is any good, because nothing has ever 100% confirmed it.
So on the slow calls I'm using rules instead. Not a clever rules. Boring ones, written down:
- How much cover before I reorder
- What margin a product clears before I launch it
- What a supplier has to do before I replace them
A written rule doesn't win because it's smart. It wins because it's consistent, and I'm not consistent (you’re not, either). My gut moves with my mood, my cash position, and whatever happened last week. Two psychologists once reviewed 136 studies pitting expert judgment against simple written rules, and the rules matched or beat the experts almost every time.
My experience isn't worthless. It's worth a lot in one place and not as much in another. I'll trust my gut on the calls Amazon grades in a week, but I’m writing a rule for the ones it grades in a year.
The IVS
Big thanks to our good friend Ritu Java for coming on again to the newsletter and posting an awesome tip. Ritu is endlessly friendly and helpful and writes a wonderful AI newsletter. If you’re looking for PPC help, check out her company, PPC Ninja.
A Claude Code Hack for Leaving Your Desk
Claude Code is great when you’re sitting at your computer.
But some of the best use cases are the ones where you don’t want to sit there watching it work. Maybe Claude is halfway through a build. Maybe it is cleaning up a system, working through files, or handling something that is going to take a while. You want it to keep going, but you also want to leave your desk.
There is a simple way to do that. If Claude is already running in your terminal, type:
/remote-control
Then open the Claude app on your phone and tap Code. Your existing Claude Code session shows up there.
The important part is that the work is still happening on your laptop, using the same files, tools, and setup you already have there. Your phone is just the remote.
I used this while building a system to track all the AI workflows my team has created, because they were scattered across a dozen different places.
I had to leave halfway through. So I turned on remote control and walked out. Claude kept working on my laptop. When it reached a decision it needed me to make, I got the prompt on my phone. I answered it there and kept going. By the time I got home, a big chunk of the build was done.
This is where I think the feature gets interesting. There is a lot of attention right now on fully autonomous agents. OpenClaw, Hermes, and more. Those systems are interesting, but they are also a bigger commitment. More setup. More moving parts. More to understand before you are comfortable letting them run.
Remote control gives you a useful step in between. You are not handing everything over to an autonomous agent. You are letting Claude keep working on your machine while you move on with your day. And when it needs you, you can still step in. You keep your hand on the wheel. You just don’t have to stay in the chair.
So the next time Claude Code is running and you need to leave, type /remote-control. Open Claude on your phone. Tap Code. And keep going.
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Amazon News Week 33/52
Amazon is forcing sellers to reauthorize every agency, consultant, and software tool connected to Seller Central, or access shuts off automatically when the deadline passes. |
Amazon now requires an active offer on Amazon.nl for every Pan-EU FBA listing, new or existing, with Belgium becoming mandatory next. |
Amazon confirmed the legacy Sponsored Brands Product Collection ad format shuts off in January 2027, with an interim change landing this month. |
The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon, alleging a secret phantom bidder inflated ad auction prices and overcharged advertisers by more than $20 billion. |
Amazon now lets sellers bid a per-unit price for Sub Same-Day delivery placement in about 2,300 metros, a fee that's optional for now. |
Amazon's new Ningbo warehouse charges about 10% less than its other China facilities and offers 30 days free storage on shipments received through December 31. |
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Real Estate Here is Slowing Down for Sure!
After the massive post-covid boom, when building and buying were on fire and prices jumped like crazy, things have come to a screeching stop. There are still sales happening, but there's a lot sitting on the market now.
The ultra rich are still buying. But in our area alone there are about 10 houses listed between $2.8 and $3.5 million. At that price, your buyer has to be someone who wants to live here full time. I don't think the math works as a short-term rental or a long-term hold at that number. (the first home my buddy owns and just rented to a pro poker player and his family that are here for a year).
Around me, about 6 of those are still under construction, hoping to sell before they're finished. You can tell which ones. Some sites are down to a handful of guys puttering away, stretching out the work to slow the cash burn. The play is obvious: get it sold before you have to pay for the windows and the AC units.
Busy season is a few months away, and maybe things pick up. But I think some prices have to come down before there's real action. The question is how far they have to drop before buyers feel good about their portfolios back home and start writing offers again.
The numbers back it up. Active listings in Tamarindo were up about 50% year over year as of last August, and nearly the same in Hacienda Pinilla. The Tico Times reported that median values in Guanacaste came down from peaks above $900K in 2024 to the mid $500s by early 2025. Some of that is just cheaper properties making up more of the sales, but the direction is clear.
Set Up Claude Code On The SP-API. That's The Whole Hack.
I could come in here this week and give you a good Amazon hack (they have been good lately). BUT I'm feeling fired up though, so I'm going to give you the BIG KAHUNA.
The biggest Amazon hack you can do right now is set up Claude Code or Codex so it can read the Amazon SP-API. That's Amazon's official Selling Partner API. It hands your AI your orders, your inventory, your fees, your listings.
You will not find a bigger one in anyone's newsletter in the last year. This is the thing that opens up your Amazon account.
How do you do it? Ask Claude how. Or ask whatever AI you already use, it'll walk you through the whole setup.
Now.. we ran a poll in SFTB and 83% of people said they didn’t do it because they didn’t know how.
Don't be afraid of it. And if you can't get it working, hit reply and we'll have a chat about getting it set up for you.
The Exact Month Cheap Train Tickets Go On Sale in Each Country
Train tickets do not work like plane tickets. Every railway opens sales on its own schedule, and the cheap advance fares only exist inside that window. Eurostar and German domestic trains open 11 to 12 months ahead, French TGVs and Trenitalia 4 months, Bulgarian domestic trains 5 days. Miss it and you pay walk-up costs like 140 euros for Paris to Nice against 25 booked ahead.
Seat61.com is where those windows are written down, free, by one man. Mark Smith ran Charing Cross, London Bridge and Cannon Street for British Rail, then ran the team regulating fares and ticketing at the Department for Transport, and quit in 2007 to do this full time. Route by route he names the site to buy on and its booking fee. Simply amazing.
Yes the site looks like it was designed in GeoCities in 2004. But it works.
I recommend some serious nerding out here if you are into train travel!
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.
Paulo Coehlo
RELIGION! Now that I have your attention… you probably would like the Facebook community.
This week in the Facebook group: Max shares a truly “unique” product mashup
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